


It's Not the Size

by gryfeathr



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Arm Wrestling For Fun and Profit, Carver's Chip On His Shoulder, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Gen, Minor Fenris/Hawke, No Spoilers, blink and you miss it - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryfeathr/pseuds/gryfeathr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>De-Anon from the DAII Kink Meme</p><p>Prompt: Fenris & Carver arm-wrestle, Fenris wins</p><p>When Carver finally met Fenris, he couldn't believe he was capable of doing any real fighting, let alone lift that sword. Hawke supposed it was unavoidable that it would end up in a drunken bet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not the Size

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from the DA Kink Meme: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15999.html?thread=61075071#t61075071
> 
> //I don't know if there's any official data on Fenris's height, but I headcanon him as really really short, like 5'2-5'3 at most. And also quite lean, because he doesn't need muscle mass thanks to the lyrium. 
> 
> So when Carver sees this tiny elf carrying a huge sword, he assumes it has to be for show, because there's no way Fenris is strong enough to actually fight with it. And for some reason Fenris cannot demonstrate his battle prowess (maybe one of his arms is hurt and they haven't met Anders yet, so he can't have it healed immediately), so someone suggests an arm-wrestling match. 
> 
> Carver is beaten so badly that Cailan's defeat at Ostagar seems like a minor loss in comparison. 
> 
> (if you include Carver using both of his huge muscly arms to lift one of Fenris's skinny twigs and still not being able to move it an inch, it will be +20 friendship from me)
> 
> (also I absolutely wouldn't be opposed to Carver/Fenris)//
> 
> Well, I got two out of three.

It had started with a fight.

Well, really, it had started three hours ago when Isabella had declared they all needed a round, and then kept announcing it until even Varric started to look a little tipsy. He was infamous for faking his drinking, relying on being the soberest person in the room to win the last few rounds of Wicked Grace to earn all his money back, but he had rosy cheeks and was laughing a bit too loud. Hawke felt the room tip around her a bit as she stood up and let Carver steal her chair.

He plunked down into it, grim and definitely not sober, as he slammed his elbow on the table and hunched over it with the fingers of his open hand curling. Carver stared intently at Fenris on the other side. 

"I can take a skinny elf any day," Carver growled. 

Fenris looked him over slowly, his eyes piercing despite being slightly glazed over from that wine Isabella had slipped him. He pulled himself languidly up in his chair, baring his teeth into a grim smile, as he mimicked Carver's pose and placed his elbow on the table. 

"That's all very nice to say, but you've yet to prove your boasting," Fenris announced loftily.

Hawke found her cheeks a bit rosy and dragged her gaze away, putting both hands on the table to steady herself as she placed herself between them. There were cheers in the background, and she heard Isabella leaning over to Varric.

"I bet ten gold on the sexy elf," Isabella whispered loudly.

"Ten? Who are you betting against?" Varric said, laughing. "No no, I'll be the booky, I am not betting anything."

"Then--then I have ten on Carver," Merrill said.

"Do you even have ten gold to rub together, sweety?" asked Isabella.

"I have--I have five, and two tinctures I made last time we were on Sundermount," Merrill demurred. 

"Well, let's do this proper--come on! Collecting bets!" roared Varric, climbing to his feet with his hands up. The noise in the tavern broke into laughter and shouting, and gold was changing hands and somewhere Varric had pulled out a parchment.

Hawke sighed.

Two days ago, Carver and Fenris had properly met each other for the first time. Hawke had kept them apart, in part, due to a sense of self-preservation; Fenris was surly and hard to handle at the best of times, and her brother was no better. It was like oil and fire. Anders and Fenris had spats, but it wasn't the same. Anders wasn't her brother with the chip on his shoulder and too much to prove.

Carver had turned to her immediately.

"This is Fenris?" Carver had said, doubt thick in his voice and the turn of his brows.

"Is your hearing somehow impaired?" drawled Fenris, already prickling. 

"Yes, this is Fenris. You know, I mentioned him--big sword, cuts people up into bits?" Hawke said. "I thought you'd be excited, you both like big swords."

"But I can actually use one," said Carver, eyeing Fenris. Hawke had to force herself to see him as her brother must have; Fenris was shorter than even her, a little over five foot if she was being generous and included a lost tuft of white hair. His body wiry, all the strength hidden in lean lines that lay close to his bone without any fat to spare to fill himself out. The sword on his back looked almost hilariously oversized, and Fenris had to hunch his shoulders slightly against it.

"I have killed more men than you have met in your life," Fenris spat, dismissive as he turned his head to ignore Carver and focus on Hawke's face. "Now Hawke, about this crazy plan of yours."

And the one thing Carver hated more than anything was people ignoring him in favor of his sister. Carver swelled in size, straightening his back and throwing out his shoulders the way he did on their debt shakedowns working with Athenril. He stepped in, almost between them, with a stern look craved into his face.

"I'll go instead," said Carver. "You don't look like you can even use that sword, I should be the one to go."

Fenris's eyes had flicked to him, annoyed.

"I have gone on plenty of errands with your sister, who is obviously the one with actual eyes in her head," said Fenris, and Hawke had been pleased at the almost-compliment. "At least she has the sense to choose at least one competent companion. Unlike yourself; I have not heard of you going out to Sundermount."

It had only devolved from there.

Since then, Carver and Fenris had been sniping at each other; Carver a low key dismissive and unbelieving, Fenris getting snappish and sharp-tongued. Hawke could have done without the yelling and had ended up taking Fenris out to Sundermount, which made Carver only more annoyed. She'd dragged her brother drinking in the hopes of the two of them bonding somehow over being tipsy men who liked big swords, but it had backfired as the arguing had turned into..... this.

"Alright, alright, I'll be the judge," Hawke said, waving her hand vaguely at the middle of the table. "Now, boys, no cheating. No lyrium, no trying to kill each other now or afterward--"

"As if I would need to cheat," Fenris snorted.

"--and Fenris, take off those damn gauntlets, being prickly is also cheating!"

Fenris grumbled but stripped them off. Hawke felt a giddy little stab of delight as Fenris offered his bare arm. The turn of his muscles were outlined by the sweeping lines of lyrium, his knuckles large, his fingers long, and Hawke decided she wasn't staring at all.

"I still vote for an oiled wrestling contest," said Isabella, sulky as she plunked down next to Varric's increasing pile of betting coin. Varric whapped her knuckles as Isabella reached for some of the gold.

"Now, now, we don't have time to clear the room and buy that much oil," said Varric. "This is definitely good enough."

"You're all idiots," declared Aveline. 

"So who are you betting on, Guard Captain?" said Varric, grinning.

Aveline glanced at him. "Just be happy I'm not breaking this up. ... And five on Carver."

"Five it is," said Varric, indulgent, and he marked something down with a flick of his pen that had been magicked out of somewhere. 

"Five from me too!" insisted Anders, plunking them down with a flourish that almost sent him sideways.

"Alright! Final bets closed!" announced Hawke. She tapped the table--Fenris and Carver locked stares. Scraping chair legs were the only noise as silence gathered around them and the two adjusted their seats--heels digging in, knees wider apart, and bodies pushed up against the edge of the table.

They gripped each other's hands.

Hawke, grinning hard enough that her face hurt through the alchoholic numbing, placed her hand on top of their ridges of knuckles and centered their hands. Both were warm to the touch; she could feel the vibrating of readied muscles through her fingertips.

"Ready--Steady--Go!"

Carver lurched in his seat, the chair shifting back as he pressed into hand. Hawke snatched her hand away as Fenris's head went down, arm locked, and tensed his shoulders. 

Her brother was impressive, in his way; he was over six foot, build like a fortress, all square shoulders and wide middle. He took jobs hauling around stone for the exercise and had spent most of their childhood determined to beat the bullies off his gentler twin. He looked a lot more like their father, that way, all square with that jaw and nose. He heaved; he gripped Fenris's hand and pushed all his weight into it.

The lines of Fenris's neck stood out and his back arched a little, but he just.... smirked. 

As the seconds strung out and Carver struggled, murmurs started to roll around the tavern. Hawke felt the heat of bodies pressing up at her back, jostling to watch as sweat began to slip from Carver's hair and down his face. Red flushed his skin until it was hard to remember he was tanned from the Kirkwall sun. 

Fenris's hand did not move; he looked intense and focused, just like he did in battle, although the knuckles of his hand stood out sharply. 

Carver's feet slipped a little on the oiled floorboards; his chair shifted, and his eyes were wide. Then he grunted and twisted his body, trying to find leverage--his shoulders were bunching with strain.

"Well throw me into the harbor," murmured Aveline, deeply impressed.

Isabella grinned, eyes half-shut, cat like in her pleasure. 

"Oh, you should know better than to bet against a pirate, Aveline," purred Isabella. Aveline scowled.

"Put your back into it, Carver!" shouted Aveline. 

It broke the damn; yells and cheering swelled and filled the room. Carver struggled even harder, but Fenris hadn't even tried to put his hand down; it was hard to tell if he was simply waiting or if he couldn't. Hawke held her breath, staring at their slightly wobbling hands, and not sure who she was rooting for. Carver strained; Fenris seemed to be unmovable, a rock in the ocean that would not budge if purely out of spite.

"He has to be cheating," grumbled Anders.

"He's not glowing, he's not cheating," said Merrill. "Besides, Hawke and I would notice, its all--lightningy."

Merrill was right; Hawke knew the feeling of the lyrium bending reality. It hummed in the back of her teeth when Fenris glowed on the battlefield and turned into a ghost. 

Carver's grip was slipping. Red in the face from effort and anger, Carver lurched to his feet and grabbed at Fenris's fist with the other hand. A roar rose; half the people were yelling about cheating, the other half cheering him on, and a mix of the two spoiling for a fight to break out.

Fenris looked, just for half a second, to Hawke's face. Their eyes met; Hawke's breath left her, brows hitting her hairline at the smirk that twitched at Fenris's mouth.

The sound of Carver's hands hitting wood splintered the cheering into astonished silence. Fenris had only slightly risen from his chair to get the proper torque; Carver's hands hit the table's surface with a bruising whack. Carver stumbled and his chair spun back, kicked away by Carver's tangled feet. 

Hawke didn't pay much attention to the yelling about winnings, or Isabella sweeping gold into her bandanna or Varric trying to control the crowd. Fenris had risen, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. He stared down at Carver's bewildered face, her brother's cheek mashed into the table top as he stared at his own hands. 

"How?" murmured Carver, finding his feet. His face was blank as he looked down at his red and sweaty palms. "It doesn't make sense."

"It's not the size that matters," said Fenris, dry, and Hawke tried to stifle her snort of amusement. 

"Come on, Carver," said Hawke, clapping a hand to her brother's shoulder. "You can probably beg a consolation drink out of me."

He shrugged her off, and she rolled her eyes. 

"No, but how?" insisted Carver.

Fenris eyed him, then his hands, then his shoulders, and then he looked at Hawke warily. She smiled at him, shrugging. 

"It's called using your body wisely instead of relying on meat-headed muscle," said Fenris slowly. "Its technique and strength in equal parts."

"..." Carver's mouth pressed into a thin line. Then he stiffly nodded to Fenris, his pride beaten, and turned to stomp for the door.

"Carver, wait," said Hawke, guilt lurching in her stomach. She pushed the chair out of her way and prepped an elbow to dig through the crowd after her brother. 

A hand came down on her shoulder, and when Hawke turned to look, it was Aveline with a half-smile on her face as she shook her head.

"Leave it, Hawke. He needs to lick his wounds in private, and think a bit about why he's wrong," said Aveline. "You won't help."

Hawke scowled, prepared to say exactly who was Aveline to tell her what she should or shouldn't do, but didn't have the chance. Isabella had swaggered through the crowd, her hips and sway enough to break a path to them, and passed Hawke to swing an arm across Fenris's shoulders. Hawke's attention was immediately arrested by the way Fenris didn't quite reflexively lean away from human contact, lifting an eyebrow at Isabella leaning into him.

"You've earned me some fair coin tonight, broody," said Isabella, grinning and breathing deeply so her chest pressed against her shirt. She jangled her bandanna full of coin at him; her hair, freed from being tied back, tumbled over her shoulders in a dark and glistening pile of locks. She was flushed and tipsy and very, very rich for the moment, and very, very close to Fenris.

"Steady there, Hawke," said Aveline, gripping Hawke's elbow. Hawke had no idea why.

"Does that mean I might see any of it, since I have enriched your evening so generously?" Fenris asked.

"Perhaps," Isabella said, lofty. She jerked her chin at Varric. "I'd ask your booky; you made him a profit skimming off all the bets!"

Varric grinned; Merrill was in the process of patting down her pockets for the tinctures she'd mentioned earilier, and Anders looked sullen with his nose in his beer. 

"Do you think now you both will stop arguing?" Hawke asked aloud, more to the air than expecting a response. 

"Either they'll be best friends or worst enemies after this," said Aveline. "Men. Always matching the size of their swords."

"But it's not the size," Hawke said, echoing Fenris earlier with an arched brow as she caught his eye; Fenris stilled and his ears turned a little red, and he grumpily shoved Isabella off. Isabella laughed, loud and rich, and Hawke cracked a smile--well, at least they'd deal with the rest of it later.


End file.
